A special election today in middle Tennessee will be crucial in determining whether Republicans or Democrats control the next round of redistricting in 2011.

Going all the way back to the middle of the 19th Century, Tennessee's legislature was safely in the hands of Democrats -- and with it, control of redistricting.

Even when Republicans controlled the governor's mansion during redistricting years -- as they did in 1981 (when Lamar Alexander was Governor) and 2001 (when Don Sundquist was Governor) -- the Democrats' majority in both houses was strong enough to override a gubernatorial veto.

Swing State Project analyzed the recent release from the Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey, and the numbers may help explain how Barack Obama did so well in traditionally red states last year -- and why both Republicans and Democrats are going to have to rethink their long-term Electoral College strategies.

According to the data, 21 of the 25 fastest-growing congressional districts in the country (as measured between 2000 and 2008) are currently represented in the House of Representatives by Republicans.

The only four of the 25 fastest-growing districts not represented by Republicans are in the suburbs and exurbs of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Raleigh, and Chicago.

Three days after the coup in the New York state Senate, two questions come to mind:

To the Republicans who now control the upper chamber -- to what end, exactly?

To the Democrats who lost power -- why are you trying so hard to reverse the coup?

It appears that in both cases, the answer is simple: As in the fable of the scorpion and the frog, the competing power centers are so used to doing everything they can to achieve power for power's sake, that they cannot break their habits and stop themselves -- regardless of whether or not controlling the state Senate actually serves their larger strategic purposes.

All politics is local, former House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill famously said.

National GOP strategists whose job it is to recapture the House of Representatives may be about to learn that lesson again -- the hard way.

That's because Monday's New York state Senate coup may lead to a new Democrat being sworn into Congress just in time for Labor Day.

The reason: the interests of New York Republicans don't necessarily coincide with national GOP concerns.

Is New York just a few short years away from becoming a larger Massachusetts?

Based on President Obama's nomination of New York Republican Congressman John McHugh to serve as Secretary of the Army, that may be exactly what his White House has in mind.

Massachusetts, with 10 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives -- each of which is represented by a Democrat -- is the largest state in the Union to be represented in the House by the members of only one political party.

That's the result of a brilliant 2002 gerrymander that passed the Democrat-dominated legislature over Republican Governor Jane Swift's veto.

That's the only lesson that can be drawn from yesterday's budget charade in the Illinois state house.

The brazenness of Illinois Democrats -- the party of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, Sen. Roland W. Burris, and (dare I say it?) President Obama -- reached a new nadir last night, as the Democrats who control the state House and Senate, unable to pass a full year's budget without massive job-killing and (more importantly to them) re-election-threatening tax hikes, decided instead to pass only a partial-year budget.

So instead of being done until the next budget year, House and Senate members will have to reassemble in January 2010 to pass a budget for the rest of the fiscal year.

Why enact a partial-year budget good through January 2010, and not, oh, say, August 2009, or October 2009?

"When I die, I want to be buried in (fill in the blank). That way, I can remain active in politics."

That joke -- which has been variously attributed over the years to scalawag politicians in Cook County, Illinois; Hudson County, New Jersey; and the entire state of Louisiana -- has depended for its laugh on the acknowledgement by the audience of a certain, how shall I say, "moral laxity" when it comes to the casting and counting of votes.

In places like Cook County, Hudson County, and the Bayou State, political legend has it that entire cemeteries have voted, sometimes tipping the balance even in races of national import.